Category: Blog

This is the highly informal blog of the GAME-department. We use it mostly to document the things we do outside of running one of the worlds strongest game educations. For information about our education, programs and courses, check the official site at Uppsala University.

Grendel Games (Netherlands) have been making serious games since 1999!

Jan-Jaap Severs is visiting us again next week for a guest lecture on serious games and the challenges inherent to the production and design of these types of games. Jan-Jaap is one of the co-founders of Grendel Games, a studio that’s been producing validated and commercially successful serious games for twenty years now! That is a lot of experience to be listening in on.

Time: 10:00-12:00, Thu 14th MarchPlace: E22, Campus Gotland

“Dealing with stakeholders, requirements and evidence in serious games development”

During this lecture we will discuss several aspects that make serious game design and development a challenging endeavor.

We will look at managing stakeholders and domain experts with different backgrounds, who speak totally different languages. We will investigate methods of gathering requirements from these stakeholders and the common obstacles we face during that process. Finally, we will discuss the gathering and dissemination of scientific evidence of the effect of a serious game and how we can prepare for this during the design phase.

The lecture will be structured around three in-depth examples in the fields of surgery training, behavioral change pertaining to water consumption and mathematics training for children with learning disabilities.

Time: 10:00-12:00, Thu 14th MarchPlace: E22, Campus Gotland

Please note: students taking the Serious Games class must be given priority. There are only ~20 free seats available, so guests have to be prepared to sit in the stairs!

At last yearsgame educator’s summit there was a desire to set up a Research Summer School. The idea was for a roaming event, highlighting and strengthening games research. Together with our colleagues at Högskolan i Skövde and Södertörns Högskola we are happy to announce that applications are now open for the first Research Summer School in Skövde this August!

The three day summer school is open to PhD- and graduate students who are working in areas connected to digital games and takes place in Skövde, Sweden, from 21 to 23 of August 2019. Both early PhD students who are presenting conceptual work and planning for research as well as advanced students who near their defense are welcome. The course is worth 3 credits (ECTS).

Students will present their work and get individual prepared feedback from a senior researcher and a peer. The summer school also offers lectures and workshops led by senior researchers. The topics for 2019 are:

There will also be a seminar that allows participants to find collaboration possibilities and partners and formulate possible topics and agendas for shared research projects.

Application (25th of March)

If you are interested in participating, please send the following to Patrick Prax before the 18th25thof March*:

An academic text that you are currently working on (between 500 and 1500 words excluding references)

A short description of the over-all (research) project this work is a part of. This could be your dissertation, a master thesis, or another kind of publication or design work.

A brief CV showing your academic and professional work related to games

A few small travel stipends are available on a first come, first serve basis (it will not cover the full cost). If you have financial need, please include this in your email and you will be notified if any stipends are available based on the time you submit your application. You do not need to submit financial information

* The application deadline has been postponed by a week. The new deadline is 25th of march!

The event is free to attend and aimed at people who are considering going into games – whether it’s a mid-life career change or looking for higher education. Ergo: it is an excellent opportunity to meet a ton of game studios and whole lot of game educations in one place!

Mischa hails from a series of Austrian studios such as Game Gestalt, Sproing and Ferrytells, while Doris founded the Deep Games Laboratory at DePaul, worked at the GAMBIT Game Lab, MIT and at Vienna University of Technology. Their work represents a veritable smörgåsbord for our department’s wish list. Not just encouraging, but dragging games to be better: to talk to the human condition; to represent nuance and a range of emotions.

Rusch’s work is focused on the theory and practice of game design, particularly in regard to games that model the human experience. For example she’s made;